[Flash Walken]

Boy, not only has Christie blown his opportunity to be the GOP frontrunner, his immediate political future might be in jeopardy.

In an exclusive interview with msnbc’s Steve Kornacki, Mayor Zimmer claimed that two senior members of Christie’s team informed her that relief money for Hoboken would be held up unless she approved a redevelopment project backed by the governor. She singled out New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner, as the officials who delivered the alleged ultimatum.

“The bottom line is, it’s not fair for the governor to hold Sandy funds hostage for the City of Hoboken because he wants me to give back to one private developer,” she said Saturday. “I know it’s very complicated for the public to really understand all of this, but I have a legal obligation to follow the law, to bring balanced development to Hoboken.”

There is video of the interview at the link as well
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/5...ristie-scandal

(CNN) -- In another controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Sunday that Christie directly ordered the withholding of Superstorm Sandy recovery funds unless she backed a redevelopment plan he favored.

Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Zimmer said she was told by a member of Christie's administration that Sandy relief funds hinged on her support for a real estate development project and that the directive was coming directly from Christie.

"She said that to me -- is that this is a direct message from the Governor," Zimmer said, referring to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who Zimmer said approached her in a parking lot in May to deliver the message.

It's "stunning" and "outrageous," but true, the Hoboken mayor told CNN's Candy Crowley. "I stand by my word."

Later in the day, she released a statement saying that she had met with the U.S. Attorney's Office for several hours at its request and provided the office with her journal and other documents.

"As they pursue this investigation, I will provide any requested information and testify under oath about the facts of what happened when the Lieutenant Governor came to Hoboken and told me that Sandy aid would be contingent on moving forward with a private development project," she said.

Zimmer said the Christie administration wanted her to approve a project by The Rockefeller Group, a real estate developer with ties to Christie's administration.

When asked by CNN to respond to Zimmer's accusation that Christie had a direct hand in the threat, Christie spokesman Colin Reed refused to address it and instead referred to a previous statement, which said Zimmer's allegations that relief funds were withheld is based on partisan politics.

The allegations come as other controversies revolve around Christie's administration. In one, evidence mounts showing that Christie aides were involved in tying up traffic in a town at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in what may have been an act of political retribution against another mayor. In another, the Christie administration hired a firm for post-Sandy tourism ads that cost nearly twice as much as the next highest proposal.

This is the first time Christie has been directly connected to the controversy.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/18/politi...e-sandy-funds/

The embattled governor and his administration were already facing multiple investigations over the politically vindictive George Washington Bridge traffic debacle last September as he was breezing to his landslide reelection. But Kornacki, 34, managed to increase Christie’s troubles significantly on Saturday with a blockbuster interview featuring Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, a Democrat who, until now, anyway, had been a conspicuous cheerleader of the Republican governor.

On Kornacki’s show, Zimmer accused Christie and his minions of refusing to release millions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy recovery aid to her flood-ravaged city on the banks of the Hudson River unless she fast-tracked approval and lucrative tax breaks for the construction project of a supremely well-connected real estate developer. She offered to take a lie detector test and testify under oath.

“I wasn’t sure how much play it would get, but I knew it would cause a stir when I walked in Saturday morning to do the show,” Kornacki said about Zimmer’s allegations, which were supported by emails from lobbyists and New Jersey state officials and other apparently corroborative documents, including the mayor’s messily scribbled private diary. “I wasn’t sure how big it would be. I figured it would have an impact. It was a bigger impact than I expected.”

Kornacki’s scoop--obtained with help of New Jersey sources dating back to his years as a Hoboken resident and reporter for a political web site owned, serendipitously, by future Christie Port Authority appointee and bridge scandal principal David Wildstein--turned out to be explosive. It was front-paged in Monday’s New York Times and the mayor, after repeating her allegations Sunday on CNN, doubled down by telling her story to the U.S. Attorney in Newark.

Along with the bridge incident, it’s another active criminal investigation for federal prosecutors, and could potentially derail not only Christie’s governorship and his chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association, but also his plans to run for president in 2016.

Team Christie has reacted with a ferocity reserved for the deadliest of threats, impugning the “partisan” motives of Mayor Zimmer and MSNBC, denying her allegations about a quid pro quo, and trotting out Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno--whom Zimmer identified in her diary and television appearances as the official who took her aside and strong-armed her in a Hoboken parking lot last May--to essentially call Zimmer a damned liar. This, in a press conference Monday at which Guadagno looked like she was making a hostage video and declined to take questions.

“From the personal standpoint, the weird thing about all this is that I know so many of the players in this story so personally from my New Jersey days,” said Kornacki, who toiled for Wildstein’s web site, a precursor to PolitickerNJ, in the early 2000s. “This story is national in scope but involves relationships in Jersey that go back ten, twelve years. ‘Weird’ is one word to describe it. Professionally, it’s right-place, right-time.”

Despite his Rolodex of Jersey connections, Kornacki didn’t know Zimmer. “I might have met her covering politics, but if I did I don’t remember,” he said. He first heard about her problems with the Christie administration early last week and made an appointment to see her in Hoboken, where she confirmed what he’d been hearing and offered up her documents.

The mayor dispatched an aide to take Kornacki on a tour of the proposed construction site in a warehouse district in the north part of town, where the Rockefeller Group, the venerable developer that built Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, had purchased four acres and wanted substantial tax breaks to erect an office tower. The developer is represented by the powerful law firm of Christie ally David Samson, who also figures prominently in the GW Bridge traffic jam scandal as Christie’s hand-picked chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...e-scandal.html

Quick Vids:


Here's a video detailing what Hoboken dealt with and is looking to rebuild from: